


Ritual

by Traviosita9124



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Jemma's internal monologue, coma!Fitz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:25:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4149909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traviosita9124/pseuds/Traviosita9124
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Fitz lies in a coma, Jemma ponders their relationship and what exactly he means to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ritual

_Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…_

The sound of the electrocardiograph echos in her ears, and has since they first let her out of the hypobaric chamber. There isn’t much other noise in his room, so it makes sense that the one, soft sound there is stays with her, even when she dreams.

 

Even those occasions are rare. Her sleep has been fitful at best over the past week, hunched over in a standard issue hospital chair, her face pressed into the rough-spun, well starched hospital sheets at his hip, her hands wrapped around the fingers of his own listless ones. In these hours, the quietest ones between midnight and dawn, when the lone nurse is content to check the telemetry readout at her station and the team is tucked away in the quarters they’d been given, that Jemma just watches him.

 

He’s pale, far more so than he usually is, and she can hear his brogue between her ears asking when exactly it was that she became so sun-kissed. The memory causes tears to sprout at the corners of her eyes, which she quickly wipes on the sleeves of her jumper without releasing his hand. He fought tooth and nail to save her then, too, and she hadn’t even realized…

 

She sucks in a shaky breath and wills away her tears, forcing herself back to her observations.

 

His lashes are still on his cheeks, which remain a startling mix of red, blue, and purple hues, and perhaps look even worse now that he’s been cleaned up. The ointment and stitches glint in the dim light emitted by false window of his hospital room, making his otherwise angelic face appear garish. Still, this one window just happens to be a view of Glasgow at dusk, and Jemma can’t help but smile as she wonders if it’s a view with which Fitz is familiar. The thought somehow makes the deep shadows cast across his face less menacing, and Jemma even manages a little grin, even though it’s watery, and presses a kiss to his knuckles.

 

He’s so still, unbearably so for Jemma, after all of the years she spent growing used to his fidgeting and chaos. Fitz _is_ movement, in Jemma’s mind, and to see him lying there, neat as a toy soldier on his back with his eyes gently shut, the only motion the shallow rise and fall of his chest… it tears at something in her. She stifles her sob in the sheets and lets the tears come freely now, heedless of who might see her, as she recalls the manic energy with which Fitz did absolutely everything.

 

She’s just reliving the day he set the DWARFs, fresh from their minting as prototypes and still terribly faulty, loose in the faculty room at the Academy by accident, a smile tugging at her lips, when exhaustion finally claims her.

 

~*~

 

She’s woken at seven on the dot by Skye, who after shaking her shoulder hands her a Styrofoam cup of coffee and nods in the direction of the door. This has become routine, too, and she no longer fights the gentle command to take a shower and eat something; instead she speeds through it as quickly as possible, and with her hair still damp and a piece of toast just barely settled in her stomach, Jemma curls into the chair at Fitz’ side once more.

 

She works her way through the lab and field reports Coulson’s had drawn up for her, then moves on to the journal articles she’d earmarked to read. She becomes so engrossed in one article on bioluminescence and its potential uses in detecting cancer that she asks for his thoughts, and it’s only while waiting for his response that she remembers.

 

He’s in a coma, and has been for weeks. He was in a coma because he insisted on saving her life after confessing his love.

 

And all she’d been able to do was pepper his face with kisses and scream as he pressed that red, glowing button.

 

The memory sets off shivers along her spine, causing her to shake in her seat. She doesn’t speak for the rest of the afternoon, not when Triplett brings her lunch, or when Coulson brings her dinner. She gives each man a small nod and forces her lips to curve upward for them, but she simply isn’t capable of more than that. All she can manage is to watch Fitz, waiting, hoping, and at times even praying, to see the smallest movement - even the twitch of an eyelid - but nothing happens.

 

She vows to stay silent until it does.

 

~*~

 

_Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep…_

 

By the time the evening picture has risen once more, and the night nurse has done her one obligatory check on the patient, Jemma’s taken to tapping her fingers along Fitz’ wrist in time with the soft beeping, tracking his heartbeat without even really realizing it. It’s instinctual for her, keeping track of him, and it occurs to her that it is the biggest reason why this shell of her best friend is killing her.

 

He’s living, but not actually alive.

 

And if Fitz isn’t alive, what is she? After years of being FitzSimmons, she can’t very well go back to only being Simmons… could she?

 

The very idea makes her stomach roil, and she forces the thought away. Instead, her mind wanders, over their personal history and the first law of thermodynamics, and she wonders if any of those Disney princesses her sisters had so worshiped had ever had so romantic an idea: she and Fitz were energy, atoms meant for each other no matter what they were pushed into. The thought brings an honest grin to her mouth, the first in nearly a week, and before she realizes what she’s doing, Jemma’s pressed the first kiss to the corner of his now-stubbly jaw, moving to his cheek, then above both eyes, before brushing her lips against his opposite cheek. She freezes then, pink lips hovering over the pallid corner of his mouth, warm breath ghosting over chilled skin, and her grief comes thundering back, filling her to her fingers and toes as sobs begin to rack her thin frame.

 

She pushes back from the hospital bed, somehow managing to collapse into the chair and not onto the floor. She gets her sobbing under control just enough to keep the nurse from checking on them but she cannot help but relive their last moments together, trapped under the ocean with only a paper thin shot at getting out alive.

 

Try as she might, she can’t keep from kicking herself over and over again for letting his words of warning push her away, instead of ignoring them and forcing her lips to find the destination they’d really wanted.

 

~*~

 

_Beep… Beep… Beep…_

 

It wasn’t quite right, what she was doing, but Jemma couldn’t seem to help herself either. Somehow it had become a part of her self-soothing ritual, and it was how she found herself retracing the same steps she had the past three nights.

 

Jaw. Right cheek. Right brow. Left brow. Left cheek…

 

But here she always freezes, unable to actually press a kiss to the thin line of his mouth, despite wanting to desperately. Her whiskey eyes dart across his face, still far too peaceful for Fitz, and she wrestles with knowing what she should have done and what happened and what should happen now.

 

But she just can’t.

 

Jemma wants his eyes open when they kiss for the first time, wants him to know that this is them, for real, that there’s no duplicity or shame or need to hide from each other…

 

She sighs and drops her head to rest on his pillow, her temple pressed to his cheek, and her curls create a dark curtain around the two of them. She sends out a half-cocked prayer to the universe that he wake up _now_ so she could hold him and feel him return the embrace, but of course, nothing happens. She sighs again, settling onto her side as she presses in along his good arm and careful of the tubing and wires connected to his barely-beating heart, drifts into a restless sleep.

 

~*~

 

It takes three nights of falling asleep in bed next to Fitz for Skye to catch her at it.

 

Thankfully the hacker doesn’t say a word, just hands her the same cup of coffee and gives the same silent nod to the door, ignoring the blush that’s risen in Jemma’s cheeks. She’s grateful for that, and is about to exit when Skye’s voice breaks the silence, interrupting the soft line of beeps still being sent into the room by the machine.

 

Jemma turns to face her, braced for some smart ass comment about telling him how she feels before it’s too late, and she swears, if that’s what Skye’s called her back for… but that isn’t it at all.

 

“Simmons… Jemma,” Skye swallows around her first name, her tongue testing out the unfamiliar syllables. “The doctors are coming today, you know, to check on him.” She nods to the bed, in case Jemma hadn’t realized they were coming to check on Fitz, and leaves her words there to hang. A sense of dread creeps over Jemma’s shoulders and up her neck, causing her hair to stand on end.

 

She bolts for the door, intent on hurrying through her morning routine and getting back to him.

 

~*~

 

_Beep…_

 

She had been right to worry. The doctors had brought nothing but bad news.

 

_I’m sorry, Dr. Simmons, but you know that with him being out for this long…_

 

She clutches his hand between hers, willing him to squeeze back as tears filled her eyes.

 

_… the likelihood of a complete recovery is…_

 

Jemma begins to sob in earnest, bringing his hand to her mouth to press frantic kisses along his knuckles.

 

_… his living will stipulates that at such a juncture…_

 

She’d wanted to scream at them when they’d brought up his living will. She knows damn well what is written there; she’d helped him write it, and had signed it as a witness, same as he had signed hers. They’d prepared them before going into the field, wanting to make sure that their families were taken care of if anything happened to them. The understanding that they’d go together had been implicit.

 

This outcome, him going before her, is entirely unacceptable.

 

She scrambles onto his bed, arms wrapping as best they can around his thin torso, trying to get as close as possible. They couldn’t have him, couldn’t take him, not without taking her, too. She won’t allow it. She buries her face in the thin hospital gown, right over his heart, and lets go.

 

Jemma knows she needs to get all of _this_ , the loud, vocal emotionalism out of her system now, before Mary Fitz arrives. She’ll be here in the morning. Trip and May departed earlier, taking the jump jet to pick her up. Jemma had insisted on that. Fitz would want his mum to have a chance to say goodbye, and she wants to be under control and strong for her when she gets here.

 

She owes it to the woman who let her monopolize her son for the past eight years.

 

When her tears come under control, what feels like hours later, Jemma looks up at Fitz, silent and still as always. She’d give anything to feel his arms wrap around her, hands pressed against her back as he rubbed soothing patterns to ease her tears. Instead, he’s left her, aching and lonely, and Jemma knows this is the last chance she’ll ever get.

 

She pushes up on the mattress, putting herself even with his face and begins the ritual for the last time. The heavy, dreadful feeling in her gut tells her as much.

 

_Jaw_

 

She sees him as he was at the Academy, all prickly snark and refusal to get near anyone. If Weaver hadn’t assigned them to be lab partners… who knows what either of them would have become.

 

_Right cheek_

 

The first time she’d had her heart broken in America, Fitz had gone out hunting for ice cream and the list of terrible movies she’d wanted. He’d only known her four months, but he’d insisted that any half decent bloke couldn’t stand to see his best friend cry. On reflection, she realizes she’d started to fall in love with him then.

 

_Right brow_

 

He’d spent hours hunting for their flat in Boston, intent on having a place to call home. She smiles as she recalls how excited he was about maybe getting their parents and her sisters to come over and spend Christmas with them. That had never materialized.

 

_Left brow_

 

Their first real argument had been about going into the field. He’d been insistent that it’d be too dangerous, that they belonged in a lab, but he’d relented eventually. Because, when Phil Coulson comes calling, you don’t say no, as Jemma had pointed out.  

 

_Left cheek_

She remembers the flush of his cheeks and his bashful grin as she’d reassured him that he was the hero, not Ward. She wishes she’d been more specific and had told him what she’d actually been thinking: he was _her_ hero.

 

She pulls back, her eyes fixed firmly on his mouth. The mouth that had frustrated more than one professor and agent and hell, even her, over the years with its snark and general grumpiness. She wonders what it would have been like to have kissed him that day in his bunk, or one of the other millions of times she’d wanted to but had simply been too afraid of the potential consequences. And this _is_ her last chance…

 

She’d promised not to speak until he was awake, but she can’t help the soft, “Leo…” that slips past her lips as she presses them to his, fighting back her tears. She’s too late, though, didn’t make the most of the opportunities that had presented themselves, and he doesn’t return the slight pressure or wind his hands about her waist or into her hair the way she’d always imagined he would.

 

Jemma pulls away for the final time, eyes screwed shut to hold back the hot flood of tears, when she cocks her head to the side, listening for the steady beeping that she’s come to expect of the electrocardiograph.

 

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beepbeepbeepbeep._

 

“Jemma?”

  
She lets out a startled laugh and repeats the ritual for what she hopes will be the first of many times, carefully pressing kisses to his jaw, cheeks, and brows, before landing a lingering one on his lips. 


End file.
